


as long as you want to

by brucewaynery



Series: iron man bingo fills [5]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Iron Man 2, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Iron Man 2 Compliant, Possible Character Death, what happens in vegas ends up on front page bc he's tony stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 06:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20110924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucewaynery/pseuds/brucewaynery
Summary: "Marry me, Rhodey, I have a month left and I want to spend it married to you."ORTony goes to Vegas for his 40th, and last, birthday expecting to get blackout drunk, and leaves married to the love of his life. (For my 'Las Vegas' square on iron man bingo 3000)





	as long as you want to

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhh villains dont exist verse?

** Certificate of Marriage **

**This certifies that**

_James Edward Rhodes_ **AND** _Anthony Edward Stark_

**were united in marriage in the city of Las Vegas, in state of Nevada**

**36 Hours ago...**

“Can I ask you something personal?” Tony asks, looking up at Natalie. She nods, a small and controlled movement and carries on dabbing concealer on his face. “If this was the last birthday party you were ever going to have, what would you do?” For him, it’s not really a question of _if_ anymore, is it? But Natalie doesn’t have to know.

He’s debated telling Rhodey and Pepper, but that would just make the whole ‘dying’ part harder, before, when the toxicity was lower, there’d been no point in worrying them, when a cure was on the horizon, except now, his boat’s pretty much sunk, so there’s no point lighting a flare if no-one’s going to come in time. 

He really, really should tell Rhodey. The first person who cared for him, out of choice, his first real friend, his first love (not that he knows, because that would be too much for him), god, _fuck_ he should tell him, he deserves to know. But he can’t. It feels like the ultimate defeat.

Natalie stops pressing the beauty blender against his face and looks him in the eye.

“I would do whatever I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with,” she says, softly, holding his gaze. Tony swallows and breaks eye contact. 

So he goes to Vegas.

(He didn’t take a single syllable of her advice. He wants to spend the night marathoning Star Wars with Rhodey, but he can’t be with Rhodey. Not now. It’ll be better for everyone. It’s better if he just pushes everyone away, just push and push until he doesn’t have anyone, but by that point, he’ll be dead anyway.

_A man who has everything… and nothing._)

He gets there with the suit, it’s faster and results in fewer questions than the jet. And it’s a chance to show it off, which is always a plus. It might make getting back later harder, but in all honesty, he’d rather go out in a crash in the suit than the slow and painful end the palladium promised.

He lands, secures a room, opens a tab and gets as much alcohol in his system as possible while still being able to bet and mess around. He supposes that the palladium changed his tolerance, which was a shame in many ways, but now it just meant that he could get drunk faster.

He doesn’t know what he’s even doing, everything’s a blur. It’s the last birthday he’s ever going have and he won’t even fucking remember it.

Happy 40th birthday to him.

Whatever. He takes another shot and goes to roll the dice, but some guy stops him. Some guy with 2 heads? Rhodey! Oh fuck.

“Yeah, fuck,” he grumbles, voice just about getting through to Tony, “you’re coming with me.”

Tony knows that because of the whole ‘Iron Man’ thing he’s been fitter than he’s ever been in his life, but he’s still no match for Rhodey, so he’s very easily manhandled… somewhere. Easily, only in his eyes. For Rhodey, it was the farthest thing from ‘easy’, Tony kept trying to hug him, which he’s rarely opposed to, but now, it was just causing a general hinderance. He must be further gone than thought.

Eventually, they get out the casino and Rhodey gets in the Iron Man suit (he refuses to let Tony anywhere near controlling it when he’s this drunk, if he can’t drive a car, he can’t fly the suit).

“Colonel Rhodes,” JARVIS greets, after the mandatory retinal scans.

“Hey JARVIS,” Rhodey always made a point to interact with Tony’s ‘bots. He has a soft spot for Dum-E. (He pretends it’s not because he was the very first person he showed him to.)

“Take care of my creator, would you?” JARVIS says, and Rhodey doesn’t know if Tony’s truly mastered giving AI emotions, but he seems to speak profoundly, as if he were passing on a baton. There’s something Tony’s not telling him. But that’s not a priority right now.

“I’ll try my best.” For as long as he’s alive, he’ll always try to take care of him, always love him. At this point, it’s been so long, he doesn’t know if he can do anything else.

He grabs Tony and flies them up to his suite, they land on the balcony. He pushes him on the bed before getting out of the suit to JARVIS wishing him, “Good luck, Colonel.”

“Ooh I wouldn’t be oppos’d t’ this,” Tony says, well, slurs, really, head lolling - he’s been in Vegas for about an hour, maybe, Rhodey has no idea how he got this drunk already, but Tony’s always been good at defying his expectations. Rhodey thinks nothing of it, Tony’s just... like that. Platonically. 

“Tones, I’m gonna get you some water, okay?” Rhodey says, pushing him so he’s leant against the headboard and tugging his shoes off. He goes to find a bottle of water (there’s one in the minifridge, nestled behind mini bottles of whiskey and cognac) and by the time he’s back, Tony’s on the verge of tears, body drawn into a small ball in the corner of the bed.

“Hey, hey, Tones, what’s going on,” he says, gently, coming next to him and kicking his own shoes off, he puts the water bottle on the bedside table and sits on the bed next to him. He wraps an arm around him, Tony’s terrible at asking for affection, but after all these years Rhodey knows, almost intrinsically, when he wants it.

Tony looks up at him with teary eyes and Rhodey feels his heart breaking for him.

“Rode- Rhodey… I’m,” he swallows, “I- this, fuck this’s hard, I--”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, yeah,” Rhodey can’t listen to him try to force something out, so he pushes the water into his hand and rubs his back until he finishes it. Tony winds his arms around his waist and tucks his head into his neck.

“I’ll, I shouldn’t tell you like, like this, I- tomorrow. Promise,” Tony mumbles into his neck.

“Okay, okay, Tones, sleep, yeah,” Rhodey says, easing them down so they’re actually lying down and pulls Tony further into his arms, “sleep.”

Tony’s out like a light and Rhodey is staring up at the ceiling until the sun starts to filter in, holding the man he loves.

In the morning, well, afternoon, really, Tony wakes with a start. When he set out last night, he had half expected to end up naked in a stranger’s bed, but as soon as his other senses start to filter in he realises that, while he’s not in his own bed, it’s not a stranger with him. And he’s fully clothed.

“Hey,” Rhodey says, softly, running his hands through Tony’s hair.

Tony groans and buries his head back into the pillows. Right away, he can’t remember much of last night, he knows that he set out with the intent to get shit-faced, and he remembers arriving in the suit, but past that is just a blur. It should come back. Tony’s not too sure that he wants it to come back. 

Usually, this is when Rhodey laughs. This time, he murmurs something about getting Advil and water and being back in ten. He untangles himself, much to his disappointment and goes. Tony falls back asleep.

When he wakes up again, there’s a packet of Advil and a couple water bottles on the nightstand, so he swallows two with a bottle of water before taking in the rest of the room. Rhodey’s out on the balcony talking to someone on the phone, but when he notices that Tony’s awake, he hangs up and comes back in.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

“Eh,” Tony replies, which translates into ‘it feels like an anvil fell on my head, and the light hurts a little’, so all in all, not as hungover as he thought he’d be. _Rhodey gave him water last night._ Which means that Rhodey was here last night. Which means, he probably said something.

“You want to order food or get picked up?” The iron man suit isn’t even in the question.

“Food.” He’s not really up for sentences or words longer than a syllable right now, and ‘picked up’ often means a disapointed Pepper, Rhodey and Happy. Now, it may even mean a disappointed Natalie.

“Breakfast?”

Tony manages a smile at that, “Yeah.” The only problem with breakfast is that food will ease up the hangover and clear up his brain, which means that he’ll remember what he did. Or said. Fuck.

After they’ve eaten Tony still isn’t sure of what he said last night, but he does know that there was crying involved on his part. He so rarely is the melancholy drunk.

_ ‘I’m dying’ rang loud in his mind, it should be easy to say, 2 words, 3 syllables, but he can’t force it out and instead makes a promise he doesn’t know if he can keep._

Liquid courage indeed.

It comes easily this time. Maybe it’s the sober-ness, the lack of urgency. Rhodey still has his arm around him and they’re stretched out on the bed, the plates, empty, on the floor. He’s feeling relaxed.

“I’m dying,” he says, simply. It’s not a weight off his chest (ironically), it’s defeat, it’s admittance.

Rhodey stiffens up next to him, “How long...” _do you have left?_ is the rest of the question, but he can’t bring himself to say it, hell, it hasn’t even really settled in that Tony’s dying.

“A month left.”

Rhodey doesn’t know what to say, so he pulls him into a hug, holding him tight, as if he held tight enough, death couldn’t take him. He knows Tony, he knows that he wouldn’t speak like this, wouldn’t admit defeat, if he hadn’t tried everything he could think of already.

“Important month?” 

_ ‘Then this is an important week for you, Stark, isn’t it?’ _

Tony could give a one-liner, and then they’d have a heavy talk, but on the other hand, Rhodey makes some incredibly valid points, in that, yeah, this is an important month for him.

So he kisses him. If he doesn’t like him then he only has a month of embarrassment anyway.

Rhodey kisses back. It’s sweet and languid, like they’ve been doing this for aeons already, like they should’ve been doing this for aeons.

“Marry me?” Tony says, breathlessly, when they pull away, a smile brightening his face, and _fuck_ Rhodey had missed that damn smile.

“Are you still drunk?” He can’t get his hopes up, but just before Rhodey’s about to start his ‘Don’t get your hopes up for Tony’ speech, the very man in question eases out of bed, sticks his arms out and walks in a perfectly straight line. 

Rhodey grins. “Let’s get married!”

On the way to a courthouse (Tony got them bumped up so they wouldn’t have to wait), Tony asks Rhodey, “How long?”

“You remember when you made Dum-E, when you showed me?”

“That long?”

“Yeah.”

Tony rolls his eyes, “I can’t believe that we could’ve been married for decades already.” There’s more that they could’ve said, should’ve said, about how long they’ve loved, why they’ve kept quiet, but that seems irrelevant now and in the moment.

“Better late than never, huh?”

The smile on Tony’s face is ridiculously sappy, he knows that, but he can’t find it in himself to stop it, “Yeah.”

The ceremony is short and quick. They’ve waited over 2 decades, any more would be lost time. They’re both smiling so bright, because none of it feels real, none of it ever seemed tangible, but now it is. And they only have a month left.

They’re back in the hotel, in the exact same positions they were in before they were married.

“Rhodey, I was serious, I, I only have a month left,” Tony says, breaking the silence and bursting their bubble. He doesn’t want to go back to Malibu, if, when, he goes back, everything’s going to be so, so much more real, now, in Vegas he can pretend that his problems don’t exist

“Tony, if there’s anything you can do, it’s go against the odds, regardless of those odd--”

“Yeah, but this time, Rhodey, I don’t know if I can,” Tony interrupts, he sits up, turns himself to face him and unbuttons his shirt, revealing the extent of the poisoning. “Look me in the eye and tell me I can fix this,” Tony challenges, he’s angry, but he’s also begging, he doesn’t want to die, he wants to, he _has_ to, live. For Rhodey.

“Do you want to?” Rhodey challenges back, voice barely above a whisper.

Tony doesn’t answer.

“Tony Stark, do you want to live?”

“Yes.”

Rhodey pulls him into a hug, “Then you will, baby, you will, this isn’t your last birthday, you are going to celebrate you 42nd and 3rd and 4th until you’re old and grey and even then, that damn heart of yours is going to keep on beating, as long as it needs to, as long as you want it to.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! any comments and kudos are greatly appreciated <33
> 
> tumblr: ineffablestarkrogers
> 
> [heres a rebloggable post](https://ineffablestarkrogers.tumblr.com/post/186772492651/as-long-as-you-want-to) on there if that's your speed


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